


bound to you

by anexorcist



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 16:59:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7853503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anexorcist/pseuds/anexorcist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He reaches into the other boy’s chest and knows everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bound to you

Damian reaches his hand into the other boy’s chest, tentatively, because one wrong _twitch_  and Timothy would be ruined. For something so strong and resilient, the soul is a delicate thing.

He scoops out part of his beloved’s soul, just the barest minimum, and it becomes liquid stone in his palms, glowing pale white-blue like a flame but cool like a lake on a summer night.

Lifting his cupped palms to his lips, Damian tilts his head back and drinks it down. It tastes like nothing and it tastes like everything, but most of all it tastes like _Timothy_. Timothy in the morning, sleepy-eyed and warm. Timothy cradled in his arms, sated and purring like a kitten. Timothy in the dark, hungry and aching and so sweet.

He tastes like Timothy and he tastes like he’s Damian’s. As he should.

There’s a fluttering in Damian’s throat that works its way up to his head as the fragment of soul works its way down through his body and the whole world shifts, like he’s floating into the sky, looking down at his earthly vessel, being peppered by Timothy’s kisses.

But Timothy. Beloved.

Tim anchors him with his hands on Damian’s shoulders, holding him down to earth. He cradles Damian’s face in his palms, gentle and careful but sure, because he holds the whole world.

He leaves kisses on Damian’s eyelids then his nose then the corner of his mouth. And he smiles against tanned skin, teasing, prolonging their last moment together, until next time. He skims his lips across Damian’s face, never quite kissing.

But Damian’s ship will be leaving soon and he has no time for games. The sooner he leaves, the sooner he returns.

He growls and seizes the slighter boy with strong arms. Pulling Timothy flush against him, Damian ravishes his beloved, tasting his own soul in Timothy’s mouth. He searches Tim’s eyes and sees them shine with a blue that is his own, just as his eyes must shine with Timothy’s blue.

“Beloved. Timothy. Wait for me. I shall return to you.”

“I know, Captain-mine. Be swift. Be safe. Then come back to me.”

_I will wait for you._

-

In the night, a storm crosses their path, angered gods tossing the  _The Dark Knight_  upon churning waves. Damian is a great captain, mighty and strong. But he is only a man.

Before the night is over, he loses half his crew and he loses his ship, and he almost loses his mind. Something almost rips out the bright part of his chest, but with all the strength that’s left in him, Damian clings to it.

And that is what saves him. It carries him to shore - far, far off course, but very much alive.

-

Years and years go by, but Damian barely feels them pass.

In his maddening journey, he falls astray. He loses sight of his goal.

The half of his crew that remained after the storm remains no more, bones broken and crushed and in the bellies of giants.

The more (or less?) fortunate ones had been turned into pigs, all their humanity stripped away.

Odysseus reborn, Damian travels across the seaboard, fighting to remain himself. The brightness in his chest sits there, like an unattended fire - sometimes it rages in him, but most of the time, it edges closer to being extinguished.

All the while, Damian tries to hold the unraveling threads of his mind, unable to hear the call of his beloved’s soul over the Sirens’ song.

-

For years and years Timothy waits for his beloved. Waits for his hero to return while his heart grows weaker, the bond between his soul and his body thinning the longer Damian is away.

None of the healers his brothers hire can find a cure. None of the offerings they lift up to the goddesses bring him relief.

This is a different kind of sickness. It’s a weariness that starts in the soul and spreads to the rest of the body. Slowly but inevitably, it will consume him.

And the only cure is the one that Damian carried on his lips and in his body. In the blue of his eyes.

But no one knows where he is.

“Damian. My beloved.”

 _Return to me_.

Though they cannot heal Timothy, the goddesses give his message to their swiftest messenger and send him to the ends of the earth, to Timothy’s Beloved.

-

He’s fallen off the face of the earth. He’s dead, floating on the River Styx, being ferried by Death himself to an unknown place.

Damian sits in the boat, resigned. His life has been a waste. He has learned nothing from his journey but the sorrows and struggles of man. And for what?

It is dark and cold, but it does not bother him. He feels light-headed, light-bodied. Something warms his chest, and he closes his eyes, trying to figure out why it feels so familiar. Why, even in death, he remembers this feeling and longs for it.

He watches himself slump in the boat as his body floats upward, carried by the bright feeling in chest.

-

One morning, exhausted and his mouth tasting like lotus, Damian hears it. The wind whispers his name, but it is too soft, too quiet, for him to make out its words.

When the sun beats down on him and burns the back of his neck and his arms, Damian listens for it. He dives into the lake to follow the bubbles that carry words he knows by heart, and it drives away the mermaids and silences the sirens.

At night, it’s written in the stars. The name of his beloved, and he follows it. When all the creatures of this wretched world lay down, falling into slumber, Damian hears the call. It tugs him in a single direction, and he follows.

By dawn, he can see the shores of his home and he falls to his knees, rejoicing, because this is what he’d almost forgotten. This is what he almost lost.

_Timothy. Beloved. I am home_ _. I have come home to you._

-

Damian returns, on a boat he’d crafted with his own hands. He wants to kiss the land, but he saves his first kiss for the one it rightfully belongs to.

 _Timothy_.

Distress crawls up his back at the sight. He thought he had escaped the sea, but…

Beyond the sea of suitors in front of his home is another sea, full of mourners. He sees his brothers and his father among them.

Turning to him with wet eyes, they part and there, there is his Timothy, his beloved, sleeping on a bed of silk and roses.

It’s too much like a coffin.

And Timothy is not asleep.

His lungs do not fill with air, his chest does not rise, and his eyes do not open. His arms do not reach for Damian and his lips do not touch Damian’s eyelids or his nose or the corner of his mouth.

But Damian can feel it, a quiet bass drum in the background, thousands of miles away. Here, at home, away from the sea and its wrath, its monsters, he can hear it. It echoes from the ends of the world and even in the pits of hell below. The gods and goddesses on high sing of it.

Damian hears it this time, clearly, but most of all, he can  _feel_  it.

The part of his soul within Timothy calls to him, and the part of Timothy he’d swallowed down all those years ago tugs him forward.

The gravity of it brings Damian to his knees, at his beloved’s side. Where he should have been all this time.

He reaches into Timothy’s chest and kindles the fire of his soul with scarred, learned hands and calls life back to his beloved’s lips with his own.

Lips pressed to the soft shell of Tim’s ear, Damian whispers his name, guiding the lost boy back home. Calling to him, tugging Timothy toward him, and anchoring him the same way Timothy had done for Damian.

All the while, Damian holds his hands inside of Tim’s chest, cradling the precious fluttering light there.

And when it blazes–

When Timothy whispers his name–

When Timothy opens his eyes–

Damian gets lost in them, and unlike his travels, this time, he hopes he never finds his way out.

When Tim kisses his eyelids then his nose then the corner of his mouth, he feels it. And he knows Timothy feels it, too.


End file.
